Televangelist to hang for Bangladesh war crimes

Bangladesh's controversial war crimes court probing the nation's bloody independence war has sentenced a top Islamic televangelist to death in its first conviction.

Maolana Abul Kalam Azad, who has been on the run for the past year, was "sentenced to death by hanging" for genocide and murder committed during the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

Azad, 63, who for years presented a widely watched show on Islam on private and state-run television channels, is a former leading light of Bangladesh's largest opposition Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami.

In total, 11 senior opposition figures - nine from Jamaat and two from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) - stand accused of war crimes.

Prosecutor Shahidur Rahman says Azad became known as "Bachchu the collaborator" during the war in his home town in the south-western district of Faridpur, where he was accused of murdering at least a dozen Hindus.

"Six of them he shot dead himself and took part in a genocide," Mr Rahman said.

Azad, who also heads an Islamic charity, went into hiding and is believed to have fled the country immediately after the tribunal opened the case against him.

"It's a historic day for the country. It's victory for the humanity. Bangladeshi people have been waiting for this day. They can now heave a sigh of relief since 1971," Attorney-General Mahbubey Alam said.

'Farcical' case

The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), which is a domestic tribunal with no international oversight, was created by the government in 2010 and has been tainted by allegations that it is politically motivated.

Both Jamaat and BNP have called the cases "politically motivated and farcical" and international rights groups have questioned the proceedings and found loopholes in the war crime laws.

Abdus Shukur Khan, a tribunal-appointed defence lawyer for Azad, said the case was "false".

"He was not involved in any of these crimes and was never named a Pakistani collaborator in any of the war books," he said.

In the 1980s Azad became a regular speaker at a top mosque in Dhaka.

His TV shows are said to have helped shape the Muslim-majority country's sufi-inspired Islam to that of the more austere Saudi-style Wahhabi Islam.

Bangladesh, which was called East Pakistan until 1971, has struggled to come to terms with its violent birth.

The current government says up to 3 million people were killed in the war, many murdered by locals including allegedly by the members of Jamaat who collaborated with Pakistani forces.

The 1971 war began after tens of thousands of people were killed in Dhaka when then-West Pakistan launched Operation Searchlight, a campaign intended to deter Bangladeshis from seeking independence.